How do you use a clock? - Answers

There should be two hands on a traditional clock, a big hand and a little hand. The big hand indicates the minute, the little hand shows the hour. If there's a hand moving rapidly around the clock, that is the seconds hand, but we won't address this in this post. Time is rendered like this: [hour]:[minute]. So you might see a time like 12:15, or 10:47. Getting deeper into it, every set of numbers indicated by the big hand is 5 minutes long. You start at the 12, and go round the clock. 1 is 5 minutes, 2, is 10 minutes, etc. If the big hand is on the 12, it is said to be something-o'clock. So if the big hand (hour) is on the 9, and the big hand is on the 3 (3x5=15), it would be 9:15. There are a number of ticks between the numbers, as well. Two ticks between the 7 and 8 would be x:37. American time is separated into two periods, AM and PM. AM is a twelve-hour period in the morning, and PM is a second 12 hour period in the afternoon-evening. So, AM hours are from 12:01-11:59 AM. PM hours are from 12:00 noon to 12 midnight.